


He Grows On You

by analyticamethyst



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Friends to Lovers, M/M, minimal swearing, they're gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25136992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/analyticamethyst/pseuds/analyticamethyst
Summary: Gyro's perception of Fenton over time, from annoying subordinate to endearing mentee to treasured friend, to maybe something more.Gyro's failed countless times in his life. His greater failures have broken him, changed him. Watching Fenton is like watching himself, twenty years ago, before everything went wrong again and again. Gyro knows Fenton is going to break irreplacably, one of these days. Something will go irreparably wrong, because it always does with him. Gyro's just waiting for the other shoe to drop.But it never does.Maybe they'll be okay this time around.
Relationships: Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera & Gyro Gearloose, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera/Gyro Gearloose, Gyro Gearloose & Scrooge McDuck
Comments: 6
Kudos: 106





	He Grows On You

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt with "I'm in love... shit" and Gyro.

Gyro never meant to get attached to Fenton.

If he had known the bumbling, awkward, cheerful coworker would carve out a little nook for himself in Gyro’s heart, Gyro would have fought his superiors twice as hard on hiring an intern.

He had already given every excuse he had, but Scrooge was worried for him alone in the lab day after day, and the Board was tired of shoving precious funding at doomed inventions that blew up in their faces.

(Gyro was tired too.)

But somehow Gyro’s sheer force of will wasn’t enough, and he ended up saddled with the literal ball of sunshine and energy that was Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera. The duck essentially transformed into a mini hurricane in his precious lab, wreaking havoc and wrecking Gyro’s concentration. He never seemed to tire, both physically and emotionally, no matter how much meaningless work and hurtful insults Gyro threw at him.

Gyro never remembered dancing on Dr. Akita’s heels and shoving his thousand inane ideas in his mentor’s face. Yet Fenton greeted Gyro every morning with his too-bright grin and a plethora of new ideas. He followed Gyro around the lab like an unwanted puppy, asking a million questions a minute, forcing Gyro to multitask and make mistakes on his precious inventions. He also seemed to have a special knack for popping up in Gyro’s personal space right as Gyro was about to finish an important and tenuous process, startling him and, more often than not, making him mess up and have to start over.

Gyro did not regret making the bathroom his workspace, which was rather immature by his standards, but Fenton took it in stride, just like everything else. He didn’t even realize right away! What an idiot.

Although, the personal space and questions may have been the only characteristic of young Gyro that Fenton _didn’t_ adopt. Despite them having zero similar physical characteristics, the younger duck served as a painful window to Gyro’s past self. 

Gyro… didn’t really know how to handle it. He certainly was no Akita; he lacked his old mentor’s eerie calmness and quiet confidence in spades. But Fenton was unmistakably Gyro, but a Gyro lost to time, a Gyro that crashed and burned and _died_ twenty years ago.

Sooner or later, something was going to to go horribly, terribly, miraculously wrong. Something was going to break Fenton’s spirit forever. It would _break_ him, like how 2-BO broke Gyro, and how the Spear of Selene ensured he would never recover.

Fenton was just a disaster waiting to happen, and as Gyro’s intern, Gyro would most likely be there for his failure. The thought of essentially watching a repeat of 2-BO from the outside, watching Fenton’s unshakable friendliness and passion crumble and shatter irreplaceably, terrified him. It was like watching a horror movie with dramatic irony, where the audience knows about the killer but the characters don’t, and the audience just watches them die slowly one by one, with the sickening sensation that something bad is about to happen and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

Truthfully, there is something he could possibly do. He could talk to Fenton, but the thought of laying all his failures and terrors bare on the table terrified Gyro. For all his scientific genius, he is a disaster in a conversation, and not even Fenton’s inconceivably strong friendliness can save him. He can’t go to Mr. McDuck about it, because his boss would probably tut gently and pat Gyro’s back awkwardly and spout nonsense about _rewriting history_ and _we can handle it_ and _good on you, lad, you care about him!_

Wait. Since when did Gyro give a shit about Cabrera?

Only because watching Fenton skip and stumble down his old path, knowing only disaster and hardship awaits him at the end, felt like someone cut open old wounds that never really healed.

He didn’t care. No, sir.

And then, the unthinkable happened. 

When Gyro, Fenton, and a few of the McDuck clan ended up in danger, Fenton hotwired Project Blatherskite. It was still under construction and never meant to be used as anything vaguely resembling a superhero, but here they were.

“How could you be so _stupid_?!” Gyro snapped at Fenton over and over in the aftermath, but he was drowned out by the adrenaline-infused praise of his peers and Beaks’ creepy hero-worship. Scrooge, Dewey, and Launchpad seemed to have somehow developed the idiotic idea that Gizmoduck was prescisely the superhero Duckburg needs, and that Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera was just the duck to wear the suit. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

Like all well-written dramatic irony, Gyro saw the picture fall into place before it happens. The Gizmosuit will be Fenton’s downfall the same way 2-BO was Gyro’s. His intern was about to crash and burn, and there was nothing Gyro could do about it since no one seemed to _listen to him_.

He felt like screaming and screaming until his throat was hoarse and his voice was gone, but it wouldn’t make a difference.

He was only a kooky, crazy scientist with a sharp tongue and a pessimistic, nihilistic worldview in their eyes. 

So he took matters into his own hands and fired Fenton and the first sight of heroic activity.

Really. A robotic suit built by Gyro Gearloose supposedly protecting a city? Yeah, please. Gyro may be an idiot but he’s _learned_ from his mistakes. He knew Gizmoduck would be Fenton’s 2-BO already, thanks universe. He was just trying to minimize the damage. Fenton would _have_ to get hurt whatever happens, but at least maybe the city of Duckburg can remain standing for another day. Unlike Tokyolk.

But the firing blew up in Gyro’s face, and Scrooge, crazy and reckless old man he was, _hired Cabrera back_. As a fucking _superhero_.

As soon as Mr. McDuck was out of sight, Gyro slammed his back against the hospital wall outside of Fenton’s room and let his knees give out, sinking into gravity’s embrace on the cold, hard floor. He buried his head in his hands, bunching his fingers into fists under his glasses. Hot tears pricked against his eyelids.

He had failed. Failed to protect Fenton from the casualties of the Gizmosuit. Failed to stop it from happening again, with more fatal results next time, despite his vehement protests.

He was going to watch Fenton’s spirit get crushed, or worse, watch Fenton _die_ , in this stupid suit, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Fenton’s scary mom came around and berated Gyro for firing her son and letting him get into danger. Gyro wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. He had been trying to _prevent_ Fenton from getting into danger!!

“Have a heart,” Officer Cabrera had snapped at him. “See if you can find the ability to actually care a little bit about my son.”

_That’s why I did what I did_ , Gyro wanted to scream. And then he froze, because he doesn’t care about Cabrera.

Does he?

Oh fuck, he does.

Gyro would have buried his head in his hands had it not already been there.

Caring only makes it harder.

He cared about Dr. Akita, and 2-BO, and look where that got him. He cared about Della, who was lost to space because of an invention Scrooge trusted him with making. He cared about Lil’ Bulb, which got him stolen by Mark Beaks and twisted into a trashy piece of tech that nearly killed them all.

~~He still cares about all of them.~~

As time went on, and Gizmoduck became a household name, no one seemed to catch onto Gyro’s fears. Not even when Fenton nearly _died_ , twice in five minutes, and Gyro had to _rebuild the entire suit from scratch_ instead of letting Gizmoduck die out like a sane person. Not even when Mark Beaks’ insane obsession with Gizmoduck ended with Huey and Webby in danger, Gyro himself _locked in a closet and electrocuted_ (he’d very much like to have a talk with Ms. Dee for that offense) and Fenton’s secret identity in the hands of a very dangerous woman. All so Beaks can feed his stupid ego. 

Gyro’s daily nightmares, once filled with images of 2-BO wreaking havoc on Tokyolk and Della vanishing from any and all communications permanently, had a new element to them. Fenton, sometimes in his Gizmosuit, sometimes without, dies and fails and breaks in a million different ways each time. Gyro woke up screaming every night. It never got easier.

He can no longer play at not caring about Fenton.

Then Della came back, crashed a Spear of Selene outfitted with more gold than original parts, but it was a Spear of Selene all the same, and it brought D _ella_ , alive and well. The Spear of Selene had doomed her, but Oxy-Chew had saved her. When Della squeezed all life out of him in a tight hug and then punched him in the arm because _black licorice, Gyro?!? Seriously?!_ Gyro didn’t know how to react.

He had always thought his invention killed her, but it turned out to have _saved_ her.

Gyro’s worldview, previously unshakable, was suddenly rocky, cracks winding through the foundations, with this discovery.

Maybe his failures weren’t as black-and-white as they seemed. Maybe he wasn’t an irredeemable monster.

M ~~aybe Fenton won’t fail at all.~~

It all came to a head one day when Huey brought _2-BO_ , somehow alive but malfunctioning, into his lab. Gyro shoved down his long-lost, precious memories of 2-BO in Akita’s lab before he- _it_ \- destroyed the city it was supposed to protect. They returned to the site of Gyro’s greatest failure, where he broke the way Fenton ~~might~~ will soon, and Gyro’s careful plan falls apart. 

Just like the Spear of Selene, Gyro realized he was wrong. Tokyolk’s destruction was never his fault. It was never his failure or his weight to bear. It was Akita’s, not his or 2-BO’s.

And when he rises from his slapfight with his former mentor to see his invention, riddled with Akita’s corruption, towering over Fenton, helmetless, injured, and vulnerable, he had a lot of decisions and epiphanies to come to in a split second.

2-BO- _Boyd_ \- was not evil. Gyro wouldn’t let Akita’s tampering bring death and destruction to Tokyolk, _again_ , and to Fenton.

Tokyolk may have never been a true failure of Gyro’s, but he still won’t let Fenton fail here.

He brought Boyd back in a way he never would have thought of previously. He had acquired a kid now, and that means it’s time to come clean to Fenton.

His intern- no, _coworker_ \- accepted Gyro’s terrors more easily than he expected, and somehow weaseled Gyro into promising to call him the next time he has a nightmare.

Gyro didn’t expect to keep that promise, but he did. And he called again, and again, and again.

And somehow that turned into a budding friendship, one based on a mutual passion for science and care for each other.

Because Fenton cared about him, Gyro realized one day with a shock, the same way he cared about Fenton.

Gyro buried his head in his hands and hoped he was done with heart-stopping epiphanies. But he wasn’t, not yet.

He had one more to go, and it came at one of Mr. McDuck’s fancy company parties that his kids and Mrs. Beakley had weaseled him into spending a lot more money than he would have liked. Gyro allowed himself a small chuckle at his boss’ indignation before he dragged Fenton off to make fun of all the frivolities of the party. 

As he and Fenton pushed their way through the mingling crowd towards the food table, Gyro hapazarded a glance back. Fenton, clad in a white-and-lavender tux that he had blushed and fingered at Mrs. Beakley’s inspection of it before the party, claiming it belonged to his father. But it fit him well, and accented the soft color of his feathers. The warm yellow light of the candles and chandeliers did as well, and as Fenton passed Launchpad his face lit up in a brilliant smile that warmed Gyro’s heart and brought a small smile of his own to his face.

Then it dropped just as suddenly.

_I’m in love…_ **_shit_ ** _._

Gyro stiffened and dropped Fenton’s hand, causing the aforementioned duck to immediately pause his quick greeting to Launchpad and whip around towards Gyro, his beautiful face twisting in concern. Gyro waved him off and sprinted away, ignoring Fenton’s cries of protest and worry, and dove into a small storage closet stocked with brooms and mops. (Mrs. Beakley would be furious if she found him here.) He slammed his face into his hands and dropped into a crouch on the floor.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid…_

How on earth was Gyro supposed to handle this?! He had just gotten used to Fenton as a coworker and friend.

Surely Fenton would resent him if he confessed and upended their already tenuous relationship.

A small, hesitant knock sounded on the door. Gyro groaned. Ugh, speak of the devil…

“Uh, Gyro?” Fenton’s voice drifted through the door. “Are you in there? I thought I saw you run in here… I could have lost you in the crowd, but you kind of stand out… I know you don’t like parties, but it’s not like you to run off unless something’s really wrong…”

Gyro stayed poised on his toes to run, despite the fact that he was trapped in a tiny supply closet with nowhere to go. He didn’t trust himself to reply, so he stayed there silently, holding his breath in anticipation.

After a moment of silence Fenton groaned and dropped his head against the door. The bang startled Gyro, his already-racing heart speeding to new heights. 

“Ugh, stupid. Talking to an empty supply closet.” Fenton muttered to himself. Gyro’s heart ached, especially since he really was listening. 

“Fenton, it’s okay. I’m in here,” he called nervously. His voice was quiet, never rising above a whisper, but somehow it reached Fenton’s ears and he heard the other duck slump against the door in relief.

“Oh, good. I was worried about you, Gyro,” Fenton replied softly. Gyro thought he might have heard a bit of affection in his tone, but he scoffed to himself. Obviously not.

Fenton was an idiot, but even he wasn’t enough of an idiot to actually care about Gyro. Not in the way Gyro apparently cared about him.

_Ugh_ , love was stupid. Harder to figure out and navigate than friendships, and that was saying something! And it was on its way to destroying one of the only precious friendships Gyro had managed to secure.

Ugh. If only he was aromantic like Huey, who had nervously come out to him recently. So much easier.

(Huey would happily debate him on this later for sure.)

“Gyro?” Fenton called again, and Gyro realized he had never replied to his worried coworker. Another failure. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replied back awkwardly. His tone was stilted and hesitant in a way that juxtaposed his usual unshakable aggressiveness and bluntness, which gave Fenton pause and only made him more worried. 

Fenton hesitated for another moment before calling a worried goodbye and ducking away, probably to find Della or Mr. McDuck. Gyro groaned and cursed his own misfortune.

He knew he cared about Fenton, and he had for a long time. So why did it have to get infinitely more complicated?

He pulled out his phone to text Della and Launchpad. They both had been through many relationships, and knew the ups and downs well.

Gyro sighed heavily and rubbed at his forehead in frustration. 

Somehow he’d figure this out. He just had to make sure his stupid _feelings_ didn’t get in the way of his friendship with Fenton.

Since there was no possible way Fenton could reciprocate them, right?

**Author's Note:**

> HI I FINISHED A WRITING REQUEST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWO YEARS DFGHKL;LKHGFGHKL LET’S GO this actually isn’t one of the old ones i got it recently so it doesn’t feel like a full victory but we’ll get there!! I’ve actually been in major writing block recently so I wasn’t expecting to write today, but I woke up this morning with this idea and wrote this in two hours (which is why it’s so bad sdfghgfd) but i finished it and i’m so happy enjoy
> 
> this ended up being a little more of a gyro character study than i intended and it feels shitty and a lot like my old writing sorry. it’s unedited mostly, so i apologize for any grammatical errors. (I actually wasn't going to post this here on ao3 for that reason, but this fic got a really good response on tumblr!! So I thought might as well post it here. If you're one of the people who's liked/reblogged/commented on this fic on tumblr, thank you!! I'm so glad you like it!!)
> 
> anyway hope you like it! thanks for reading! if you liked this (why) check out my other writing under the #my fanfic or #wavey writes tags at my tumblr analyticamethyst, my ao3 here, or at my wattpad PurpleDragon2003 (I’m not really active there though). I also might open writing commissions soon, so if you like my writing and you’re in a position to commission me please keep an eye out for that! Thank you I love you so much <3 <3


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